Electrically powered machines are isolated from a power supply before performing adjustments, maintenance, or repair work of the machine by a human operator. Such isolation is required in order to prevent any accidental connection of the machine with the power supply unit. Similarly, the electrically powered machines are also required to always stay operational under normal working conditions. A down time of as low as a few minutes can have severe effects on other dependent processes and machines. Therefore, it is necessary to have a locking mechanism associated with circuit breakers in order to avoid unauthorized start and stop of the electrically powered machines.
Conventionally, a single common locking arrangement is used to provide lock to the levers of the toggle switches. The toggle switches are configured to control the ON and OFF operation of the circuit breakers. Therefore, locking or restricting the movement of the toggle switches, locks the circuit breaker in a predetermined position that is either ON or OFF. The disadvantage of such conventional locking arrangement is that it provides unwanted access to the switches, other than those toggle switches which need to be accessed, thereby increasing the chances of an accidental ON or OFF of the other toggle switches. Therefore, there is felt a need for a locking apparatus for toggle switches that can facilitate independent locking and independent actuation of each toggle switch from a plurality of toggle switches.